TORONTO, January 25, 2012 – York University Professor Leslie Greenberg, a pioneer of Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), has been chosen as the winner of the 2012 American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Applied Research.

Greenberg has spent more than 20 years researching a psychotherapy method that helps people become aware of their emotions and express them, learn to tolerate and regulate them, and finally, to make sense of them and transform them. He now trains therapists from around the world in the technique at York University’s Emotion-Focused Therapy Clinic.

“It’s not about eliminating emotions, but working with them,” says Greenberg. “Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Psychoanalysis are effective but Emotion-Focused Therapy is based on the principle that emotional change is best achieved by changing emotion with emotion, rather than with understanding or rationality, and this results in more enduring change."

Emotion-focused therapy helps people identify which of their emotions they can trust as adaptive guides, and learn which emotions are maladaptive and need to be changed. Therapy enables clients to experience negative emotions in a safe environment. EFT is based on the principle that people cannot leave a place until they have arrived at it, so it requires clients both to reclaim disowned emotion by experiencing aspects of themselves that they may not have consciously felt or may have pushed away and then transforming them by experiencing new emotions to change the old emotions. Clients learn to use adaptive emotions such as healthy grief, empowering anger, and compassion as resources to transform maladaptive emotions such as fear and shame.

After decades of research, emotion-focused therapy is now recognized as an evidence-based treatment for depression as well as couple conflict. There is also growing evidence it is effective for treating individuals who are traumatized, or are living with interpersonal problems or eating disorders.

Greenberg, a professor in York University’s Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health, was given the University’s highest honour in 2010, when he was named a Distinguished Research Professor. He has received many awards over a long career and has published widely.

The American Psychological Association will present Greenberg with its highest award for applied research at the 2012 APA Convention in Florida in August, where he will speak about his work.

York University is a leading interdisciplinary research and teaching university in Canada. York offers a modern, academic experience at the undergraduate and graduate level in Toronto – Canada’s most international city. The third largest university in the country, York is host to a dynamic academic community of 55,000 students and 7,000 faculty and staff, as well as 250,000 alumni worldwide. York’s 10 Faculties and 28 research centres conduct ambitious, groundbreaking research that is interdisciplinary, cutting across traditional academic boundaries. This distinctive and collaborative approach is preparing students for the future and bringing fresh insights and solutions to real-world challenges. York University is an autonomous, not-for-profit corporation.

Media Contact:
Janice Walls, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x22101 / wallsj@yorku.ca